3.1. Economic and Social Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Shipowners
The COVID-19 pandemic, as is already widely known, began on 17 November 2019, and on 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the state of the pandemic. Soon after, the borders were closed, and a ban on international flights and a mandatory quarantine for people coming to the country were introduced. From that moment, enormous problems for shipowners with the organization of substitutions for their crews on about 65 thousand sea-going ships sailing worldwide began. In anticipation of the reaction and actions of governments, some of them temporarily froze the substitutions. Others tried to deal with the situation on their own (e.g., by renting buses which transferred seafarers to airports that had not yet been closed or ensuring that they were organized so that the date of arrival of the bus with seafarers to the port where the substitution was to take place was consistent with the date of entry of the ship, making it possible to replace the crew [
17]). However, in most cases, the introduced restrictions on the movement of people between countries resulted in shipowners not starting new substitutions. They also did not allow seafarers to disembark and return home, although thousands had run out of contracts then. Some seafarers, who were caught on their way home or back, were quarantined, and thus practically trapped in hotel rooms worldwide. In many cases, as a result of restrictions, ships were also not allowed to enter or depart from certain seaports to change the crew in another port, and sometimes to both, which meant that the ship could neither moor in nor leave the port while remaining on the roadstead. Taking the above into account, many seafarers’ stay on vessels was often significantly prolonged and exceeded the maximum duration of the seafarer’s contract specified in the provisions of the Maritime Labour Convention, MLC 2006 [
18]. This convention was adopted on 26 February 2006, entered into force on 20 August 2013, and is known as the Seafarer’s Bill of Rights. It has established minimum labor standards and rights for seafarers, such as employment conditions, accommodation, recreational conditions, food, health and safety, medical care, and insurance. In extreme cases, the duration of the seafarer’s contract, contrary to its provisions, was extended by up to 1.5 years. At that time, the International Chamber of Shipping and the International Maritime Employer Council provided data showing that in July 2021, this situation concerned about 250,000 seafarers awaiting replacement [
19]. According to IMO statistics published in December 2020, their total number was estimated to be 400,000 [
20]. It should be remembered that as many people were waiting for embarkation at the same time (so in total it was 800,000 people). For comparison, about 100,000 seafarers are swapped on ships every month under normal conditions. At the same time, considering that there are currently around 1,890,000 seafarers working on sea-going vessels in the world [
21], the problem in question has affected the vast majority of them and their shipowners, demonstrating its scale and importance.
The increase in the duration of seafarers’ contracts was equivalent to the fact that among their crews (physically and mentally fatigued from exhausting and long-lasting work), the risk of accidents at work increased accordingly. In a broader context, the risk of ship accidents also increased. In both cases, this always increases the cost of employing the crew (insurance costs, payments, and compensation for health disorders, etc.) and costs related to the ship (ship repair, ship loss, increase in insurance premium, costs associated to late execution of transport orders, etc.).
Another factor also influenced the extension of the duration of seafaring contracts. For example, restrictions were imposed on ships entering seaports, including a mandatory two-week quarantine of a vessel in the maritime zone. At the same time, the governments of some countries, for various reasons, including political ones, have extended the duration of customs clearance of goods, their loading/unloading, imposed huge duties, or introduced tedious and lengthy controls at seaports [
22,
23]. The duration of services provided by port services (e.g., pilotage) and port employees caused issues (in addition to loading/unloading the ship, they include, for example, operational and repair service of vessels). The problem emerged due to a limited number of hands to work, as the employees were in quarantine (suspected of contracting COVID-19) or during treatment. This also disrupted the operation of the ports themselves.
Lengthening of the ship’s anchorage (on the roadstead or in the port) is a waste of money for the shipowner. From an economic point of view, a ship that does not work is a ship that does not earn. On the contrary, it generates, in the most straightforward settlement, additional costs of fuel consumption or payments to the crew, but not only. It is estimated that the average cost of maintaining a ship in standard, in terms of non-COVID conditions, is several thousand USD per day. In addition, during the pandemic, the costs of transport alone increased. The current price of transporting goods in containers (where, in terms of tonnage, 15% of cargo in world trade by sea is containerized cargo), including subsidies to the basic rate of sea freight in 2021, increased 4–5 times compared to their level 5 years before the pandemic, and sometimes even more (even nearly 7 times). The analysis of average freight values evidenced this. For example, using indicators: Drewry’s World Container Index (calculated for eight major east–west shipping routes, DWCI), Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (calculated for 13 major connections starting in Shanghai), and Freights Baltic Index (calculated for 52 seaports in the world). In the case of the first of them, its average value in the last 5 years before the pandemic (2015–2019) increased from USD 1856/FEU (FEU is a unit equivalent to 40′ container) to USD 9261/FEU in December 2021, while on 6 September 2021 it was USD 10,374.6/TEU (TEU is a unit equivalent to a 20′ container), and on the route Shanghai–Rotterdam, as much as USD 14,287/TEU. The second indicator, on January 2, 2020, reached an average value of USD 1009.3/TEU; on December 11, 2020, it was already twice as high—USD 2311.7/TEU, and a year later, on December 10, 2021, four times higher—USD 4811/TEU. The value of the last of the discussed indicators in mid-December 2019 was USD 1431/FEU, in December 2020—USD 3004/FEU, and on 10 December 2021, as much as USD 9550/FEU. Special subsidies are not considered when calculating the value of these indicators. Such as, for example, the “Premium” service, which is a promise (but not a guarantee) of obtaining a slot, i.e., a place on the ship for a container, or FAK surcharges for “freight of all kinds” with promises of priority expedition. The most difficult moments of the period in question even caused a doubling of the basic rates. Figuratively speaking: for an importer importing several containers every month in 2019, e.g., from China to Poland, they were amounted to about USD 2000 per container, while in the third quarter of 2021, they werealready USD 20,000 [
24].
It should also be remembered that a large part of the global fleet of sea-going ships, operated by the most prominent participants in the transport market, is leased. In addition, the cost of chartering a medium-sized container ship (with a cargo capacity of 6500 TEU) transporting 20′ containers (suitable for most of the transported cargo) in the first half of December 2021 was estimated (according to the Container Ship Time Charter Assessment Index—an index of charter rates on time; it considers the current day charter rates of six representative types of container ships; these are ships with capacities of 1100 and 1700 TEU chartered for a one year and with ships with capacities: 2500, 2700, 3500, and 4250 TEU chartered for two years [
25]) at the level of USD 104,000. One year earlier, it was more than three times lower and amounted to USD 31.5 thousand [
24].
In the broader context of the deliberations, the pandemic has also caused disruptions in demand and supply and in global supply chains, of which seaports are essential links. The market imbalance in early 2020 resulted in reduced demand for container transport and, therefore, a massive cancellation of shipping services by shipowners. At that time, manufacturers using container technology stopped production or severely reduced it, and in China, there was a labor shortage in transport connections. Accordingly, in January 2020, compared to January 2019, the number of ship entrances to the ports of Shanghai and Yangshang decreased by 17%. In February 2020, the number of entries to all ports in China decreased by almost 1/3 [
26].
According to the ISC (International Chamber of Shipping—an organization representing national shipowners’ associations and more than 80% of the world’s tonnage in commercial shipping), due to unperformed voyages, shipowners’ losses amounted to hundreds of millions of USD [
27]. Deliveries were unpredictable, and the punctuality rate of the best shipowners, which before the pandemic was over 80%, decreased [
24].
As a consequence, the number of tethered ships (i.e., ships standing idle in ports) has increased, accompanied by a gradual increase in the transport capacity of the global container fleet as a result of continued investments in new tonnage in 2019 (at the end of 2019, this capacity amounted to 23.23 million TEU, and in September 2020, to 24 million TEU). Ship deliveries followed it to shipowners (in 2019, a total of 178 ships with a total capacity of 1.2 million TEU) and placing new orders, the portfolio of which in October 2020 included 282 ships with a total capacity of 1.6 million TEU [
26].
Therefore, the scrapping of ships also increased, more significantly than usual, even those that have not yet reached the age of economic maturity, i.e., the end of the ship’s depreciation period, which usually covers 20–25 years. This was since before the pandemic, the shipowner maintained a ship without temporary employment at the expense of several thousand dollars a day, but it was a ship that was waiting for further transport orders. It was practically certain that this downtime period was temporary, and soon there would be employment for it. During the pandemic, this expectation has lost its economic sense, becoming one of the main reasons for the reduction of fleets by shipowners [
28].
There was also a temporary shortage of places for containers on a board of container ships during increased demand. Ordered in Asia before the pandemic outbreak in the first quarter of 2020 and transported by sea, goods were still delivered to recipients from Europe or America. Later, due to the introduced restrictions and the closure of economies, there was a lack of new supplies from China (in maritime transport, there was also a temporary lack of access to containers, which were temporarily excluded and used in China as warehouses for storing cargo). Subsequently, due to government-implemented protection programs, purchasing goods for days made by consumers trapped in their homes, investing free financial resources in various tangible goods, and buying goods for the stock by importers, there was an accumulation of demand (under normal market conditions, that huge demand would be spread over the entire calendar year). Conversely, there were too many places on ships, so shipowners could not fully use the transport power of their fleets. According to the analytical company Sea Intelligence, in August 2021, this concerned as many as 12.5% of container ships’ loading potential (i.e., over 3 million TEU). The loss of sufficient production capacity in seaports to handle sea-going vessels (as already mentioned in the context of increased ship standstill) has caused serious delays in maritime transport. Delays affected the export side, bottlenecks in unloading, and receipt of supplies on the import side, leading to further disruptions in the supply chain. According to Sea Intelligence, in mid-November 2021, current problems with loading ships occurred in more than 3/4 of container ports worldwide, where about 300 ships a day were waiting to enter, which is nearly 5.5% of the world’s fleet [
24,
27].
To conclude the pandemic’s effects on shipowners, it should be mentioned that although they were generally negative, one should notice bunker fuel prices (after their temporary increase). The improvement in terms of freight rates has nevertheless led shipowners to record profits in this difficult and unusual situation [
26].
3.2. Economic and Social Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Seafarers
As already mentioned, during the pandemic there were massive issues with the replacement of crews caused by the pandemic. These included: lack of air connections, inability to transit through some countries and difficulties in obtaining visas or transit permits, expiry of many important and necessary documents on the way from/to the ship and to work on it, performing tests for the presence of the coronavirus, the obligation to undergo quarantine before leaving the ship, before boarding it, and after arriving in the country, etc. In many cases, they caused the seafarer to be recruited or imprisoned for up to a month and longer, extending the start or duration of their contracts and thus increasing the number of negative consequences for seafarers.
The first obvious consequence of this state of affairs was their physical overload with work and the appearance of mental health challenges or impacts, such as increasing stress and accompanying psychosomatic symptoms, anxiety, depression, self-harm, or even suicide among seafarers. Reports carried out by Yale University, for example, showed that one in five seafarers took them into account [
29].
The authors met with an important view in this trend of reflection, expressing a particular belief prevailing among the society that a seafarer is a profession that requires not only hard physical work but, above all, high mental resistance to isolation on a ship. Following this line of thinking, a seafarer should therefore be more resistant to a more extended stay at sea than another average person who has nothing to do working at the seas and oceans. This is also accompanied by the belief that working at sea is conducive to strengthening interpersonal ties among crew members or exploring the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nowadays, even apart from the pandemic, seafarers spend most of their time off from working at sea locked in their cabins, watching movies on laptops, or browsing social media. Some of them permanently have webcams turned on, which allows them to receive a substitute for family life. This is not conducive to the integration of the crew, as it was in the times when the passage through the equator was accompanied, for example, by sea baptism, and the crew spent their free time in the ship’s common room watching TV together, playing chess, cards, or other games. For this, it is necessary to debunk the myth of free exploration of the world. Yes, ships sail around the world, but the reality is different from what happened in the past and from the ideas about it. Very often, a seafarer simply does not have time to visit seaports. Their duties do not allow them to do so, or the possibility of leaving the port area is (in the commonly called “wild countries” by seafarers) very limited or even excluded due to the first, second, or third degree of a terrorist threat. All this effectively weakens the psychological resistance of seafarers to isolation.
However, returning to the mainstream of considerations, the probability of making mistakes by crew members has increased due to increased physical and mental load. This increases the risk of a maritime accident, including a direct threat to life and the ship and cargo safety.
The issue of wages in the pandemic also need attention. The seafarer’s contract is frequently signed on the day preceding the seafarer’s departure to the ship. The shipowner’s obligation to pay remuneration arises on the date appearing in the contract. However, the seafarer, in order to be able to start working on board, still has to reach the ship. During COVID-19, this required quarantine before leaving. Its duration has changed, and currently, for example, for Polish seafarers, a negative result of the PCR test is enough. However, in some countries, this requirement still applies today. Sometimes it was also necessary to undergo an additional quarantine in the country where the embarkation was to take place. In total, this could mean 28 days of isolation, in which the seafarer does not work on board, but is also not on leave. At the end of the contract, the seafarer still has to return home from the ship, which further extends the period of his “forced unemployment”.
This problem concerns not only the quarantine itself but also a situation in which the waiting time of the seafarer for the ship, for reasons attributable to the shipowner (for example, vessel sale, ship scrapping of the ship, limitation or delay of rotation of substitutions, etc.), is extended to such an extent that the deadline for starting work indicated in the contract has already passed and the seafarer could not take up employment. It also applies to the repatriation of a seafarer for health or family reasons. In all these cases, it is closely linked to the issue of seafarers’ remuneration. It always results from the law and the content of the seafarer’s contract. On the other hand, for the shipowner, the payment of remuneration to a seafarer who does not work and is in quarantine will always be simply uneconomical. Therefore, the vast majority of contracts contain significant wording: “The Company shall pay a day rate for each day of work” and “Days of work are days spent onboard the vessel”, which means that the shipowner pays only for the time worked by the seafarer on board the ship. As a result, shipowners began to give seafarers documents to sign to make changes to their terms of employment during the pandemic. These changes often concern the modification of the seafarer’s working time on board, in the sense of its reduction, or a reduction in remuneration for working time on board a ship by a certain percentage or a specific amount. In such cases, seafarers shall generally receive a ready-made, signed form from the shipowner’s representative, indicating that they agree to the above amendments and are only to accept and sign them. The shipowner explains such activities most often by force majeure, pandemic, and related financial problems resulting from the situation, how it has shaped the entire maritime transport in the world, etc. Theoretically speaking, the seafarer may disagree and not sign the documents, counting on the understanding of the shipowner and the possibility of continuing further work on unchanged terms. In practice, however, as you can guess, the shipowner accepts such a solution only when he has no other choice. That is, if the refusal to change the terms of employment means the shipowner needs to terminate the contract with the seafarer, look for a substitute, and organize a replacement for him. It is prevented by the pandemic situation, epidemic regulations, or other factors, so the substitution is very difficult or impossible to implement. In different cases, it most often ends with the termination of the employment contract. This may be conducted according to the following terms (not always favorable to the seafarer) [
30]:
The shipowner shall treat the seafarer’s refusal as termination of the seafarer’s employment contract with notice, and the seafarer shall therefore receive all the remuneration due to him in this case, including that attributable to the period of notice;
The shipowner will treat the seafarer’s negative decision as termination of the seafarer’s employment contract with immediate effect, i.e., without observing the notice period, and then he will not be entitled to remuneration attributable to the notice period;
The shipowner will unilaterally terminate the seafarer’s employment contract by referring to the provisions contained in the contract, which relate to the so-called force majeure (in this case a pandemic), which most often means for the seafarer that he will receive all the benefits due to him along with the severance pay.
It is also possible to unlawfully withhold the payment of wages to a seafarer until he agrees to the proposed conditions or immediate repatriation if he does not give such consent. It should also be borne in mind that the seafarer’s consent to an unfavorable change in the conditions of employment is typically dictated by his desire to preserve the possibility of performing work for the shipowner in the future, and thus the fear of losing it. However, the problem of wages is much more complicated. Namely, if the shipowner pays only for the time worked on board the ship, the seafarer will not receive remuneration, or any other cash benefits, for the time he will be in quarantine (before/after entering/disembarking). This is logical. It is also irrelevant in this case whether the quarantine takes place before or after boarding the ship, where it takes place (at his place of residence, country of residence, or outside his borders), who decided about this place (himself, the shipowner or the authorities), and under what conditions it will take place. The same applies to the previously mentioned situation, in which the seafarer signed the contract, but did not start work under the deadline contained therein. It can be said that both of these situations have the same effects as if the seafarer is ashore before and after the voyage. The difference, however, from the seafarer’s point of view, is that the time spent in quarantine or on prolonged waiting for the ship is for him, with each subsequent contract, time lost in the sense of limiting the possibility of earning. Moreover, if the seafarer has terminated his contract, disembarked, crossed the border, and during this journey home he developed symptoms characteristic of COVID-19, other symptoms, or, generally speaking, his health deteriorated, which resulted in the need to undergo quarantine in his country of residence, he is also not entitled to remuneration. On the other hand, if changes in his health are found before he disembarks, he may (depending on other circumstances) receive sickness or compensation benefits [
30].
Thus, a monthly or longer period of stay of seafarers in quarantine means economic consequences for seafarers. This is lost time for healthy people who do not have the opportunity to perform paid work. On average, a seafarer can serve not one, but several contracts during the calendar year, i.e., under nonpandemic conditions. The financial loss incurred due to the necessary quarantine or waiting for the ship is large. For example, a standard contract carried out by a Polish seafarer employed on a bulk carrier or container ship may have the following time proportions: for 4 months of work at sea, there will be 4 months at home. In the case of passenger ferry crews, this relationship can be as: 2 weeks/2 weeks or 4 weeks/4 weeks. As a result, it may turn out that for the reasons mentioned above, the seafarer spends more time on land than working on the ship. However, these proportions vary. For example, Filipino seafarers often perform 9-month contracts, and their period of stay on land is much shorter than the time they work at sea. It is worth explaining that Filipino seafarers are also employed on ships operating in the Baltic Sea area. This internationality of the crews of sea-going vessels in the Baltic Sea is most often caused by the shipowners’ efforts to make saving related to remuneration for their crew members. Global shipowners also share this approach, so in this case, it is necessary to look at the problem more broadly, form a global perspective, not just a local one. While the knowledge, skills, and reliability of (for example) Scandinavian, German, or Polish captains and officers are highly valued among shipowners, the national origin of the remaining crew is not so important to them. Employing a crew of Filipinos, Bulgarians, Lithuanians, and other nations from (for example) Eastern Europe brings measurable financial benefits. Regardless, in the discussed cases, the time relations between working on ship and staying on land harm the level of achievable wages, and consequently, on the level and quality of life, professional instability, and the related lack of sense of security for seafarers and their families. This is especially true for the seafarers of those nations in which the whole family contributes to the maritime education of one of family member. Then, he becomes its primary breadwinner by taking up work at sea (for example, the mentioned Filipino seafarers who, in addition, dominate the structure of employment for seafarers by shipping companies worldwide according to the nationality criterion, which proves the large scale of the phenomenon and its significance).
In addition, as a result of the actions taken by shipowners during the pandemic, which consisted of keeping ships tethered and manning them at that time with a minimum number of crew members, i.e., the so-called skeleton crew, reducing the size of their ships’ fleets by scrapping them, or limiting the rotation of crews, there were fears among seafarers about losing their jobs.
In the conditions of the pandemic, several other problems also arise. An example is an impossibility or significant difficulty in enforcing contractual claims from the shipowner in case of a health disorder or seafarer’s death due to COVID-19. The reason is the lack of appropriate provisions in the International Maritime Labour Convention (MLC 2006) or national legal solutions (e.g., in Poland it is the Maritime Labour Act of 2015 [
31]). The regulations cover situations such as, for example: war zone/warlike operations areas, armed conflict zone, high-risk zone, terrorist attacks, or maritime piracy. The specificity of the pandemic means that it does not fall within its conceptual scope. For example, a seafarer will not be able to refuse further work for the shipowner or demand immediate repatriation from him while maintaining his previous employee rights. He is also not entitled to higher than normal remuneration for the risk of COVID-19 infection, nor compensation in the amount exceeding the contractual provisions. In addition, many contracts are subject to the regulations of countries other than the country of origin of the seafarer or the country of registration of the crewing agency. These, in turn, have not yet developed all the legal solutions appropriate to the pandemic, i.e., specific and exhaustive provisions regulating and detailing the activities and measures that shipowners should take during the pandemic. Another issue is the legitimacy, scope, and amount of compensation benefits for damage to health suffered by a seafarer or for health disorders which are a consequence of contracting the coronavirus. Especially since in seafarers’ contracts (terms of employment, collective agreements), there is most often a provision that compensation is due only when the damage/health disorder occurred as a result of an accident at work or an occupational disease, so a link between these events and COVID-19 would have to be proven. If, as a result of infection, a seafarer requires hospitalization, he is entitled only to standard sick benefit (so-called “sick pay”) due to temporary incapacity for work. Their amount corresponds to the basic salary, and they are usually paid for 16 weeks (regardless of the actual duration of convalescence). They may also receive or claim reimbursement of medical expenses incurred. In the event of the death of a seafarer (as in the case of damage to or disorder of health), the shipowner’s compensation results from the seafarer’s contract, working conditions, and collective agreements. A particular case is the death of a seafarer after contracting COVID-19. If he did not have any symptoms on board, he would return home from the ship by air transport, and the coronavirus would appear only after some time. In the present case, it must be established conclusively that the infection occurred while he was performing his duties on board [
32].
To sum up, today, the law is unspecified concerning the pandemic. Many seafarers’ contracts do not consider the possibility of a seafarer contracting coronavirus at all, and the scope of benefits that they are entitled to for this reason is sometimes smaller than those paid due to an accident at work. Of course, the presented considerations do not exhaust the discussed problem, but only signal how important and difficult it is for seafarers.
3.5. Stratification Analysis and Lorenz-Pareto Chart
The execution of the weighted Ishikawa diagram was necessary for stratification analysis and the development of the Lorenz-Pareto chart. Only on this basis can a complete picture of the situation be obtained. Those with the greatest impact on COVID-19 infections among seafarers can be distinguished from all subcauses.
To do it, it was necessary to draw up
Table 6 (based on
Table 5), which contained a list of subcauses from a weighted Ishikawa diagram. They were arranged in terms of absolute weight value from the largest to the smallest. Their cumulative values have been calculated, which are also the coordinates of the Lorenz-Pareto curve shown in
Figure 4. Based on the Pareto rule (80:20), the subcauses with the highest value were refined.
The report field in
Figure 4 is an indicator of the division and is formed by the area of the rectangle determined by a given point of the Lorenz-Pareto curve. The size of the reference field is calculated by multiplying the cumulative value by N (N = 15 − n), where 15 is the number of all subcauses and n is the sequence number of the subcause. It reached its maximum for subcause No. 5 (preparing defective legal regulations concerning the seafarer’s working time) and amounted to 13.000.
After the stratification analysis, the weighted Ishikawa diagram shown in
Figure 3 changed. It includes only the most important five subcauses (
Figure 5).
According to the stratification analysis, out of 15 identified subcauses of COVID-19 infections among sea-going crews, only 5 leading ones were distinguished:
Ignoring symptoms of COVID-19 infection among crew members—which also includes the lack of sufficient human resource management skills; this reason means: the captain’s error in the sense of downplaying this issue and the lack of sufficient control over the actions of the crew, which does not perform tests often enough to the situation;
Ignorance (or insufficient knowledge, or not understanding) of pandemic ship’s crew management procedures—resulting from the captain’s lack of previous experience with such a crisis situation as a pandemic; this is also a reason from the group of main reasons management by the shipowner, specifically: lack of or defective pandemic ship’s crew management procedures;
Improper vessel decontamination by the crew—this is, again, a mistake in the art of human resource management;
Lack of abilities or failure to enforce (in whole or in part) the instructions given to the ship’s crew—i.e., failure of crew members to comply with instructions given by the captain or issued on his behalf by the officers; once again, an error in the art of crew management;
Preparing defective legal regulations concerning the seafarer’s working time—a cause completely independent of either the master or the shipowner; lack of influence and the possibility of changing it by both.
Therefore, the captain primarily decides on crew safety on a sea-going ship in the aspect of the pandemic. Its improvement, and therefore (in macro terms) the decrease in the incidence of COVID-19 among seafarers, depends directly on it. Still, their socio-economic costs are borne primarily by seafarers and shipowners.
A weighted Ishikawa diagram and stratification analysis provide knowledge on which problems to focus on and solve so that there are fewer COVID-19 infections on ships. Subcauses 1, 3, and 4 result from broadly understood errors in the art of management, which the captain can commit. Eliminating cause No. 5 is the hardest, most complicated, and takes the most time. However, the easiest to eliminate, possible to implement in a short time is cause No. 2, especially since it is also partly within the responsibility of the shipowner. Therefore, in the next, final stage of the research, the focus was on the development of a universal model of conduct on sea-going ships in pandemic conditions.
3.6. Model of Procedure on Board in Pandemic Conditions
The essence of modeling is to simplify the degree of complexity of the studied fragment of reality by eliminating elements irrelevant to its purpose. For modeling procedures on sea-going ships, the UML language was used with the use of Visual Paradigm software, which gives the ability to manage the complexity of procedure transformation and their variability resulting from changing general guidelines of conduct, technology, or legal regulations. It is, at the same time, an ideal and comprehensive software for the needs of quick construction and subsequent management of procedures, and the use of UML also gives excellent ease of control over them. This is very important in managing the ship and its crew since it requires good organization, coordination, and cooperation between all entities involved in transport processes and experts and specialists in many fields. In turn, using Guide through processes allows you to build so-called multidomain teams, which may include shipowners, maritime administration, ship captains, or, for example, programmers. Visual Paradigm seamlessly integrates them and enables you to manage procedures and programming processes. The use of Visual Paradigm also gives the opportunity to quickly extend the procedure, which is developed according to the model, in a situation where the primary threat will be a secondary threat, which will be the result of the former. The only requirement that had to be met during the modeling was to create a complete and unambiguous model and one that would be able to define the structure and behavior of all model elements in the event of a COVID-19 threat. It is also worth emphasizing that after formalizing the simulation model, its transformations can be made, but they do not change its structure.
The procedure was modelled in two cases of occurrence of COVID-19 virus among the crew: from a new crew member alerted to the ship or from persons outside the crew during the ship’s entry/exit to/from the port (from the pilot) or from the ship’s berth in the seaport (from persons outside the crew). The embarkation of a new crew member depends on the results performed on him before signing the seafarers’ contract, and then boarding, RT-PCR, IgG, and IgM tests diagnosing the coronavirus. The first is a test recommended by the WHO and the State Sanitary Inspections. Obtaining a positive result unequivocally confirms the diagnosis of COVID-19, but at the same time, a negative result does not exclude the presence of the virus. Hence, only a positive result guarantees that we will not be able to get on the ship of an infected person. A negative result is inconclusive. A PCR test with a certificate for travelers is performed at any time, provided that they do not develop symptoms of infection [
33]. The other two are screening tests in the IgM and IgG antibody classes, which appear in the human body at different times after contacting the COVID-19 virus. IgM antibodies are present 7–10 days after infection and may indicate a still-active infection. In turn, IgG antibodies can be detected only after 11–14 days after the onset of symptoms of the disease. They testify to their past contact with the coronavirus, i.e., that the person has already been infected, and the possible acquisition of immunity to it, but they remain in the body only for about 6–8 months [
34]. Therefore, performing these tests greatly reduces the risk of embarking an infected person on the ship but does not eliminate it. It should be emphasized that this is the current state. At the initial stage of the development of the pandemic, these tests have not yet been carried out. With regard to the latter situation, it is always possible to infect one or more crew members through their contact with outsiders. Still, carrying out the tests mentioned for that circumstance is not always possible. Medical services perform the PCR test, so it can only be conducted while the ship is in port, and cassette tests detecting IgM and IgG antibodies are not always available on ships in sufficient quantity. The model for both situations shown in
Figure 6 is a simplified version of the model obtained using Visual Paradigm.
If cassette tests are available on the ship, the most important information will be the result of the IgM test, which will inform you whether we are dealing with COVID-19 infection. If the result is negative, the symptoms that occurred in the crew member should not be interpreted as symptoms of infection with the coronavirus, but rather as symptoms of, for example, a cold or flu. In this case, the result of the IgG test may be negative (if the person did not have IgG antibodies in his body before being put on the ship, i.e., if he or she was not previously infected and did not undergo the disease and is not currently infected, he/she will not have them) or positive (if he/she was ill before entering the ship). On the other hand, if the result is positive, the infected crew member should be isolated from the others, and the ship should head to the nearest port. He/she should be in a separate cabin and keep in touch with only one other crew member who will deliver meals or medicines to the cabin door. Contact between them should be kept at a distance. It should not be direct. Isolation is also necessary when performing any tests on the ship is impossible. After the ship enters the nearest port (regardless of whether the person has been tested on the ship or not), the infected/suspected crew member will be subjected to all tests again by the ground services. Depending on their results, he either will return to the ship and continue his voyage, or he will be quarantined, following the applicable regulations, in the country where he disembarked and performed the test or in his home country. After quarantine, at least 6 weeks must elapse after the person has been re-embarked on the ship.